Inside the Garage: No. 7 Ford crew chief Gene Nead

Veteran crew chief Gene Nead has worked with Ted Musgrave, Rick Crawford, Kevin Harvick Racing and now is in charge of Robby Gordon's No. 7 Ford.

Tire problems left Gordon with a 41st-place finish at Pocono, but with strong runs at Charlotte and Dover, Nead is hoping for similar success in Sunday's Citizens Bank 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

Q: What are the unique challenges about setting up a car to run at Michigan?

Nead: For whatever reason, Michigan has a whole bunch of grooves. You can run wherever -- top, bottom -- all that kind of stuff. It's a cool racetrack, too. You don't just have to set up to run on the bottom. Usually if you get your car working good, it'll work everywhere. Most importantly, you've got to get the driver comfortable getting in the corner to be very good.

Q: How similar is it to California?

Nead: California is the same shape but it's a lot different because of the different banking. It makes a big difference as far as that is concerned. I guess Michigan is more like Charlotte, as far as transitions.

Q: What's the one thing you're most concerned about?

Nead: Grip. That place is all about making good grip. The place really gets slick and the tires are pretty hard now. And that little spoiler, that's not real conducive to having a lot of grip. You've got to just go there and work on getting a good aero balance and then work on making grip.

Q: One of things that seems to come into play at Michigan is fuel mileage. How do you approach that?

Nead: There's not a lot you can do about getting better fuel mileage but you're going to do everything you can to position yourself right to run as long as you can run, try to get it where you can make it on "X" amount of stops. You've always got see where it plays out.-- where the cautions fall, if there's a lot of cautions, not a lot of cautions, whatever. Gas mileage will come into it, but most of the time you can't sit around and figure out a plan, because there is no plan.

Q: You can't have a game plan in place?

Nead: People all of the time say they have a plan for this or that. I don't really think so because you have no idea how the cautions are going to fall, what your windows are going to be until you really get to racing. Everything affects that. We've never run unleaded fuel there, so that's obviously going to be different. The tires are probably different. Everything comes into play. If you're a little bit tight, you burn more fuel. If you're free, you don't use as much fuel. Everything changes, so fuel mileage strategy has to be figured out at that time.

Q: So it's a matter of having the experience to think on the fly?

Nead: Absolutely. Most people outside looking in don't realize that if your car is tight, you're going to burn more fuel. Just things like that are because of experience.